Posted on 09/21/2018 8:24:46 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
History is recorded daily, whether we like it or not. History isn't what happened, but the stories of what happened and the lessons these stories include.
Iran is deteriorating faster than we thought, almost to the point of no return. The Iranian people are aware that after 40 years of complete devastation by the rulers of the Islamic regime, they no longer want the Islamic Republic.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Reza Pahlavi remarked, "We all know that regime change is the ultimate formula." Mr. Pahlavi is a harsh critic of the clerical rulers who have dominated Iran over the last four decades. "[T]hat's what the Iranian people are asking [for]. It's not going to be because the U.S. says so, or the British say so, or the Saudis say so, or the Israelis say so. It's because it's what the Iranian people want."
Mr. Pahlavi is doing what he can with the limited funds available to him.
After 40 long and draining years since the arrival of Ayatollah Khomeini, I am mystified as to why political activists and groups have never compromised or found common ground to work with one another for the sake of Iran in order rescue her from a further drift into the abyss.
I would like to relay what Mr. Pahlavi said in his recent interview with Mr. Mehdi Falahati. He was asked what has he done and what plans he envisions for the future. He also spoke at length to Israel National News.
Mr. Pahlavi asserted, "Let me make one thing clear, so that my compatriots understand my goal. I don't have the slightest ambition or personal desire to capture power. However, I feel committed and obligated as an Iranian so that it is my national duty
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Those who win the wars write the history books.
This writer is toot’n the horn of the Shah’s kid.
Yeah, the Iranian people don’t like the Ayatollahs, but they like them more than they did the Shah.
Lets not get romantic for the good ole days. The Shah was a bad guy.
The last decent and competent leader that Iran had was Mohammad Mosaddegh...deposed and jailed in 1953. The US and UK helped to dump the guy, and install their puppet (the Shah). From that point on, the clock was ticking and built to deliver some crazed religious nutcase. The Iranians have been waiting for well over sixty-five years for qualified leadership.
We did not install the Shah. We did provide him with counter intelligence type help to rally his allies outside of the Capital to frustrate an attempted coup, led by the traitor Mosaddegh.
Incidentally, the Shah's father achieved the upper hand over the rebels in the 1920s, long before the thankfully aborted treason of Mossaddegh.
Took 'em only 40 years, huh?
The Iranian people are good people. While I don't think the Shah was a peach, I think what we have learned is that unless certain middle eastern societies have a strongman such as a Saddam, or a Shah, the fractured Islamic populace quickly get violently disorderly.
Allen Dulles (dir of CIA) had his hands and prints all over the downfall and removal of Mossadegh
The Shah was a bad guy.
No he wasn’t. They had fake news back then too.
Iran was a peaceful, beautiful country to visit. The Shah kept what today would be known as Islamic fundamentalists and terrorists at bay.
I'll just bet you don't, bucko.
I disagree...I went to jet school in the Navy with a lot of Iranians, and I liked them, though they acted a little goofy in a funny (not a bad way) and I went to college afterwards with Iranians, some of whom disappeared because they were called home.
More than a few I talked to didn’t want to go home with the Islamists taking over power, but would have had no problem going home if the Shah had been there.
The Shah wasn’t perfect by any means, he was dragging Iran kicking and screaming into the 20th Century, and not all people liked it (hence the fundamentalist Muslim overthrow) but he was a dependable ally trying to pull Iran out of the 651 AD mindset and bring it into the modern world.
I compare him to Ataturk in Turkey. He got the same kind of blowback in Turkey from the islamists, but...he was trying.
I know I’m old because I can remember a time when Iran, under a Shah, was a friendly state to the US and the West.
I agree with you. To paraphrase Churchill, “Moslems will always be under your boot, or at your throat.” The Shah ran a country that was about as western as a Muslim country gets, and whose women were allowed to be educated. The dark side did exist to keep the crazies down. I do believe the comparison to Attaturk is apt
I don’t have the slightest ambition or personal desire to capture power. Sure.
Just imagine a world in which the mullahs don’t control Iran, but that a reasonably friendly-to-the-West government was there.
- no nuclear weapons program
- no support, training or weapons to terror groups worldwide
- a nice counterweight to Russian and Chinese influence in the Mideast
It’d be the best of all worlds - something that Jimmy Carter ROYALLY phucked up when he forced the Shah to leave and allowed the insane mullahs to take over. My only wish, besides having the royal dynasty of Persia restored, is to see it happen while that Gergian pustule on Humanity’s ass is still alive to see it.
Iran was a reasonably safe place for all religious groups and Persians were engaged in the entire spectrum of productive reasonably free enterprise vocations.
The bad guys were the Soviet oriented Communists that Jimmah Carter and American Socialist DemoRats supported and enabled, and the suppressed Islamic Fundamentalists.
The Shah was an Anglophile and intended to Americanize Iran to look and be like America in the 1950's culturally.
The entire disaster that is Iran and the resultant effect on the Middle East is entirely the fault of Carter and American Pinko DemoRat Commie sympathizers.
RE: Lets not get romantic for the good ole days. The Shah was a bad guy.
In foreign relations, oftentimes, you don’t get to choose to deal with the leaders you want.
We only have bad preferences — what’s bad and what’s worse.
The Shah was bad, but at least, he does not sponsor terrorism and does not threaten Iran’s neighbors and did not develop nukes.
It’s either that or what we have now. That is the unfortunate choice.
I liked most of the ones I met, although a few in my college classes when the hostage crisis occurred were very dark and unfriendly, and it wasn’t because they were going to have to go home...they didn’t like America.
I had one guy in my class who hung out with us, and the first time I was introduced to him, he was introduced as (my phonetic spelling here) “Homayun Asmilee”, and when I paused to repeat it back, he said “Call me Brian!”
I remember laughing and asking “Why “Brian”?” and he grinned a big grin and said “Because I like it!”
When I was in Jet School in 1976 in Memphis, I remember seeing a group of maybe 20 Iranian sailors marching to class in a formation, being led by a petty officer. One of the Iranians snatched his hat off the Petty Officer’s head, and they played keep away with the hat as they marched up the street, all of them laughing and grinning.
Another time, I was doing my self-paced learning, and was punching hole in my work with the great big mechanical hole puncher at the front of the classroom so I could put it in my binder (that could punch holes in a stack of paper two inches thick!) when an Iranian guy appeared next to me...before I could even react, in one motion he grabbed my tie, stuck it in the paper puncher, and punched a hole in it! Dumbfounded, I looked at him, and with a grin, he handed me a $10 bill and turned and walked away! (A new tie cost maybe two bucks back then...)
I often wondered what happened to all those likeable, goofy, good natured Iranian guys when the Revolution happened a few years later.
It was the same feeling I got when I visited Dubrovnik a year or two later, and then when the war broke out in the Nineties, watching it on television...it was sad and gave me a sick feeling, to see that wonderful, clean city with those orange roofs being destroyed.
Sad.
“Lets not get romantic for the good ole days. The Shah was a bad guy.”
Sometimes God uses very imperfect people to accomplish His goals - and certainly keeping the Soviet Union in its cage until the US woke up under Reagan and was able to grind it into dust was among His goals.
2) How do you (or I, or anyone else who doesn’t know him well) know that the Shah’s son would be like him? Maybe, even if he was inclined that way, he’d have learned the lessons of his father’s mistakes and would govern in a much better (by our standards) way? I daresay that just about ANY replacement for the mullahs would be a dramatic improvement over the current state of affairs.
I’ve read good things about the son.
I guess I am saying that the Iranians would probably not want to go back to royalty. That said, strong leaders are pretty much the norm in that part of the world.
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